€400k funding approved for Marsh's Library

The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, has announced capital funding of €400,000 to Marsh’s Library to ensure the protection of its unique and irreplaceable collection of 25,000 books.

Marsh's Library, Dublin.
Photo courtesy Tourism Ireland.

The grant aid will go towards measures including damp proofing and the provision of a misting fire-prevention system.

While this isn't a genealogy library, it is one of my favourite places in Dublin to visit, so I'm delighted to hear of this funding. The Library is a magnificent example of a late Renaissance and early Enlightenmnet Library, filled with books bound in old leather.

Marsh’s Library was founded in the early C18th by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713) and when it opened in 1707, it was Ireland's first public library. It is one of Dublin's very few C18th buildings still being used for its original purpose. Many of the collections in the Library are still kept on the shelves allocated to them by Marsh and by Elias Bouhéreau, the first librarian, when the Library was opened 300 years ago.

More about Marsh's Library.